


A Second Time

by SgtSalt



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Q, Happy enough for these guys anyway, M/M, really proud of the fake bond villain group name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:08:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24313291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SgtSalt/pseuds/SgtSalt
Summary: Bond's an old dog that's outlived his owner. Where else is his loyalty supposed to end up now that M is gone?***Written for MI6 Cafe's minibang, for the prompt: "A’s trying to act like everything is fine. But B fucking knows A’s been turned. B found the bugs in their bedroom." || Featuring art by Boffin1710.
Relationships: James Bond/Q
Comments: 5
Kudos: 68
Collections: MI6 Cafe MiniBang





	A Second Time

**Author's Note:**

> Written for MI6 Cafe's [minibang](https://mi6-cafe.tumblr.com/mi6cafeminibang), for the prompt: "A’s trying to act like everything is fine. But B fucking knows A’s been turned. B found the bugs in their bedroom." || Featuring [art](https://boffin1710.tumblr.com/post/618948444626812928/a-second-time-sgtsalt-james-bond-craig) by Boffin1710, who can be found on [tumblr](https://boffin1710.tumblr.com) and here on [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boffin1710).

Bond knew he was officially gone when he watched Q pad back out of his bedroom, sleepy and nude and shadowed wherever the weak nightstand lamp light couldn't touch, and then he rolled over and got up to plant the camera. 

There was an emptiness in staring at the little disc before he tucked it out of sight, in plain sight. The eye of it was barely bigger than a coffee granule; a fact Bond was forcibly reminded of since he was placing it carefully on the sleek surface of Q's microwave in his kitchen. Facing his table. Bond knows from a different stay, a different desperate evening followed by a sleepy morning, that Q does a lot of computer work at the table. Hair a mess, glasses on even if little else is. 

Bond makes a pot of tea on reflex before he realizes his mistake — it's about one in the morning — and then decides it's as good an excuse as any for why he's prowling in Q's kitchen while the other man takes a shower.

Q doesn't take particularly long showers after sex. Bond isn't given to drawing out missions that don't give him any thrill. It means they're finished at about the same time, and Bond is too used to looking casual while carrying weapons to let his facade slip when he hears now-socked feet coming up behind him.

A slight pause. Q blinks owlishly behind his glasses. Bond feels his chest compress when he smiles, a curling thing that's suggestive but still only leaves a ghost of expression around his eyes. 

"Bit late for earl grey," Q says, though he takes the mug from Bond without hesitation. Bond's had the pleasure of handing his Quartermaster a cup of tea boiled in his own apartment exactly seven times now, spread out across five weeks. 

It was a desperate, clinging accident to sleep with him the first time. A sensory-filled mistake, another betrayal of the romance fated to always rot inside of Bond's heart; he'd loved every moment of it and never hated himself more for giving in to the cave-in loneliness he always carried.

It had always been too late for anything to happen. But after that first night, Bond knew it was worse than just his own disappointment. He just also knew that there was no other way for this to go if one of them was going to get to survive this.

The Phantom Limb had already contacted Bond by then.

Bond looks up in time to catch Q settling down at the table, wearing briefs and a sweater and nothing else, hair shining with dampness. A droplet of water has dripped down the side of his neck and the trail of it winks at Bond in the overhead kitchen lighting. 

"Going to just hover and watch? I thought we discussed how that's _my_ preference." Q's smile is as soft as his voice, and Bond obediently reacts to it. He steps forward away from the counter, taking along his own mug - just breakfast blend, no citrus in his. Q's eyes track to the side, and Bond doesn't stop walking because he's had too much practice padding closer towards danger. But he watches Q look over his shoulder at the microwave with a slow, myopic blink. Does it turn cold for a moment? Or is the draft on the back of Bond's neck entirely fabricated by his own paranoia, by the conscience that he thought had died?

Bond sits next to Q and Q smiles at him, and this time when they kiss, Q's the first one to lean in close. 

Bond knows he's gone by now, that something used to resurrection inside of him has died a final time, because when he closes his eyes and kisses back, he doesn't feel guilt. He just feels that draft again, cold against all the exposed parts of his skin. 

*** 

Seven weeks prior, M's ugly porcelain bulldog had reminded Bond a little bit too much of himself, once he'd taken it back to his flat after the will reading. He hated looking at it on the kitchen counter, and he didn't have anything else on the coffee table in the living room to drown out the silliness of it staring at him. In the end, he'd moved it into his bedroom on the nightstand, where it sat between a lap and a bland alarm clock. He slept rarely enough that he thought that might be the best place for it.

All it ended up doing was giving him yet another thing to distract him from sleeping, on the rare chance he tried sleeping in his own bed.

***

Six weeks prior, Q had been walking Bond down one of the brick-walled hallways of the new Q-Branch, towards the latest prototype car that was actually built with 007 in mind. 

"You know, Psych isn't staffed solely by sociopaths. I hear that occasionally, they muck it up and hire someone who's actually good at their job. Doesn't play word association with the patients." 

Bond didn't stop staring forward down the arched tunnel of this old, underground war bunker. That test was from before Q was settled into place. That meant Q liked reading through everyone's files. "Have you considered leaving that review on their website?" 

Q didn't do him the justice of any anxious glancing. He still stared resolutely ahead himself, unthreatened as always. "Have you considered dealing with something off the clock instead of bringing it into the office?" 

The temperature of the hallway seemed to drop a few degrees. Bond felt ice continue spiking along his ribs. Permafrost underneath. "If it's my job performance you wanted to discuss, maybe you should bring that to M, first." New M. Mallory-M. 

Q looked over at him this time, gaze sharp and partially unmasked by his glasses at this angle. Bond made eye contact, steady as if he were staring at any enemy. He thinks of that damn bulldog, surviving the blast of the first MI6 building. Loyal and stubbornly indestructible, living past the lifespan of its owner. 

"Well, if you're going to ignore the invitation to try de-stressing _off the clock_ , then yes. Let's carry on like we're MI5 on a particularly slow day." 

By the time Bond was blinking back out of his self-pity enough to see the missed offer for a date, Q had strode off ahead of him towards the car. "Zero to ninety kilometers in three seconds, Bond, which means she hardly has time to wait around for you to keep walking."  
  
Bond's smile was a dim parody of itself, but Q still got to see a glance of it when he finally turned around while waiting in front of the newly-outfitted McLaren. 

***

It's two days after he's given the McLaren. Bond is on a brief mission in the Ukraine when he meets The Phantom Limb's lackies for the first time. He's pulled into a car off the street and no one bats an eye when he kicks the side mirror askew and punches a man to the ground before he's successfully stuck with a needle in the neck. He's dragged into the backseat. Bond sits between two other enormous men for about thirty seconds of hearty struggle before he slips into the dark, liminal world of being drugged. After this many years, he can't help but consider it a familiar feeling. 

He wakes up, still in the car but newly bound at the wrists and ankles. "Not a lot of need for secrecy around here?"

The man to his left stares at him with no expression. Bond feels him pressing something into his ribs and thinks he can safely say it's a handgun. Probably a .22 or smaller. The man to his right speaks instead. "No one reports to the police around here." 

"Then you must have gotten lazy, working here for so long." Bond's smile is a slow, dead thing. When his lips move over his teeth he tastes blood. "I've been seeing your friends since I landed. Seems this conversation's a bit overdue." 

"You saw, but you didn't understand." The man speaking to him has a scar cleaved through his left eyebrow. Why must all the people who threaten Bond's life have a distinguishing feature that telegraphs them? 

"No, I think I did. And now you're trying to get information from me."

"No. No, Mister Bond." There is something in the easy way this man shakes his head that lets something cold settle in Bond's stomach. He remembers training about how to breathe, to keep it all in check. He sighs out evenly and doesn't think about anything else except how much he'd like to break this man's nose. "It's not information from _you_ that we want."

Which was when Bond became the first person to learn that some mafia based in several Slavic countries had become the first to crack the secret to the real new power of MI6 — its new Quartermaster. 

***  
  
Q always showers after sex.  
  
"It's nothing personal against _you_ ," he offers after the fourth time, when Bond protests and grips him around the waist from behind. It's a token drag back towards the bed, a hold that he lets Q break in order to keep walking away from him. "Just don't need come drying into my leg hairs."  
  
Bond watches him leave, feels the warmth leave with him, then rolls over and places the second bug under a convenient groove he'd discovered last time in the base of the bedside lamp. He's already considering how to ensure they fuck on the couch instead, next time. 

He hasn't been asked to place anything in _that_ room yet.  
  
***  
  
It's two weeks ago. Q is a terrible cook. He makes them breakfast one morning while Bond makes them tea, and only one of them manages their task without burning any toast. 

"What sort of blackmail did you have planned so that I don't tell the rest of Q-Branch their lead engineer can't fry an egg by himself?" 

"Offering to tell my entire department we're sleeping together? I'm charmed."  
  
That's not the response Bond expected. His expression tightens with intrigued surprise, like threading a screw in deeper. "Not worried about getting a write-up? Dating a coworker?"  
  
"I've broken international laws for my agents before. It's about time I break one or two rules for myself." Q sounds entirely too prim for the wrecked expanse of frying pan he's uselessly scraping away at. Charred bits of egg white stay resolutely in place.  
  
"I didn't know you were such a romantic."  
  
Q pauses like he's finally surprised for the first time this morning. He makes eye contact, glasses on like always. Reportedly, he's blind without them. Bond thinks maybe he sees a bit too _much_ with them on. "I don't know, James. I think you've got me beat on that one."  
  
He doesn't elaborate, not even when Bond offers several increasingly-improbable sex acts in exchange for it.  
  
***

"Wasn't expecting to host us tonight." Bond's opened up the door to his flat, allowing the view of Q. It's early fall and he's dressed in a sweater that swallows everything up to his throat. 

"Terrible bloody spy, then. You should always expect the unexpected." There's a beat where Bond doesn't open the door wider and Q doesn't switch his expression from the polite, grim tension of a man who's just traversed the tube in order to get back across London. "If you don't offer me tea, I'm going to test out one of the prototypes in my bag on you." His smile appears and Bond feels an echo of the relief that it always affords him, for the brief moments during or after sex that he gets to just focus on Q's expression. 

Bond turns into the rest of his flat, smirk in place, and doesn't hear anything until he feels a prick against the side of his neck.  
  
"I'd apologize, double-oh-seven, but I'm a little too furious for that right now." Bond barely hears the last word of it before his knees hit the floor hard enough that they'll surely bruise. Assuming he lives that long. 

***  
  
It's one week ago and Bond can hear Q's heart against his ear. Neither of them are cold, despite being sprawled naked across Q's couch, because Q keeps his flat warm enough that Bond's jokingly asked how he can afford the mortgage alongside his utility bill. 

Bond keeps thinking of that damned bug back in the bedroom, in the lamp. Or the one twenty feet away in the kitchen. 'Bug' is too damn fitting of a word for it. It's gnawing at him, scratching at him. Guilt isn't a familiar sensation and Bond can't figure out how to wriggle out of it. 

"Old-school romantic, you are." It sounds like sarcasm, especially considering it happens when Q shifts innocuously and Bond pinches the bit of his rear he can reach in response. But then Q keeps speaking, voice muffling into Bond's hair. Bond's not used to being the one held by the people he's sleeping with; Q did it without asking after their first time and often gets there first after sex, even now. "Always chasing after the one that's going to spirit you away from MI6." 

"Made the wrong choice for that." Bond's never too sleepy after sex to not have the energy for an argument. He feels the urge rising, but Q curls in closer over him and Bond feels a pressure from the younger man that always makes him want to pause. Want to be forced to pause. 

"It seems you found a way to merge both." Q chuckles. It's a warm sound. "Finally, an excuse to keep working while you date. At least until one of us gets killed on the job." Q clearly means it as a joke.

Bond feels cold after that.  
  
***  
  
Bond wakes up and he isn't in an interrogation chamber in MI6. He's not in any type of civilian or military jail he's familiar with. In fact, as he blinks the black-and-red static from his vision, he realizes he's staring at his own terribly boring white walls.  
  
He looks left and sees the windows, curtains pulled closed against the night. He looks right and sees a very still Quartermaster standing nearby. In his hand is something that looks like a blunt gun; some sort of taser, Bond assumes, one he hasn't seen from work yet. Q's expression is stiffly angry. Every actual line of his face suggests a neutral expression, but his nostrils are flared and his eyes are a chilling flint, even with the shitty Aldi's lamp in the corner and some ambient kitchen glow as their only light sources. 

"I'm going to ask this once. I don't want to hear anything else from you." Q's voice has a new tone. Clipped, precise, shivering. Bond doesn't like the tremor there. He likes what's happening even less, begins shifting to sit up straighter. Feels out the ends of where the binds on his wrists, elbows, ankles and knees are. It looks like it's literally duct tape.  
  
"I knew you'd find out." Bond feels his couch against his back, sits up so that his neck and upper back aren't sagging so much. He's not worried about what it'll feel like tomorrow. Tomorrow won't come, now. Q's here with a gun at the very least, Q's here with a bag full of prepared tools, and Q has found him out. 

Bond has no doubt about what happens next. Either Q kills him, or he turns him over to MI6 for them to do it. The duct tape tells Bond which is more likely. "Can you do me a favor though, Q?" Which is when his muscles tense against his will, a sudden full-body contraction that lifts half of himself off the couch, barely balanced on his taped-together feet on the floor. Bond isn't capable of looking around for where the taser probes hit, because he's too busy staring straight ahead and concentrating on getting ready to breathe once his lungs will let him.  
  
"I said I'd like to not hear anything else from you. I'm hoping that this time you'll realize I meant it." 

Bond's back muscles are finally letting him collapse back onto the couch. His entire body feels like he just sprinted a mile with it, even the muscles in his forearms. He smiles and then, as he looks back over at Q, his slowly-releasing chest muscles let him chuckle. 

Q stares at him like he's a stranger, and Bond hopes he'll kill him quick. 

"Was anyone else working with you?"  
  
It's not any of the questions Bond expected to hear first. "No." 

"Obviously I can't take anything you say as truth, but I can't find any evidence of a partner on your laptop. I imagine sweeping your flat will yield more of the same." Bond doesn't see any hint of his laptop - work-issued, usually ignored - anywhere in the room. He assumes Q's placed it in his own bag for later dissecting. "Bond—"  
  
"Left a trail only you'd be smart enough to find." Bond waits for the price of interrupting, but there's no taser this time. "You've seen that play before, Q. With Silva. But you're young. And we all have traps we choose to ignore the signs of."  
  
Q's barely-restrained anger snaps. "You're wrong, of course. You've been wrong this entire bloody time. I'm _not_ the only one who found your trail."  
  
The pressure of Bond's dread changes. "Who—"  
  
"Who do you _think_ , Bond." Every time Q doesn't say 'James' is a reminder that Bond's a guard dog that's lived long enough to turn on its master. "Moneypenny books all your flights, sees all your paperwork. She nearly has more eyes on _you_ than the ones you were busy putting in my damn flat. She's used to snappy laziness in your mission reports, not inconsistencies." Q swallows. "I think you used to be a better liar, double-oh-seven. But now you're slipping."  
  
Bond feels a clarity inside himself. He recognizes it from other moments he's stared down the barrels of guns. "Found someone worth slipping for." 

Q looks like he might be considering beating Bond with the taser next. There's something brittle in his anger that Bond doesn't like seeing. "Always the romantic." 

"Just make sure that you let them find out." 

"Pardon?" Q's expression doesn't change, but his pupils react. He's frightened, has been since this started. 

"That it was you who killed me. Let them find out it wasn't another agent."  
  
"Bond, I'm not—" 

"Not going to kill me? That doesn't sound like the Q I know." The Q that Bond knows is stubborn. Ruthless about his job and his principles, whatever they are. Bond thinks he hasn't found the exact depths of the rules Q is willing to bend, but he imagines 'aiding and abetting a double agent' isn't in there. 

"You're very eager to get out of any responsibility."  
  
Bond feels anger flush up his chest. His expression darkens without moving much. "Tell MI6 whatever you want. I'm sure you can stage it to make like I fought back. Just make sure that The Phantom Limb knows you killed me after you found out your flat was being watched."  
  
"Bond—"  
  
Bond shifts and tries to stand. Q flinches but raises the taser again. "If their big chance of getting to you was ruined, I don't think they'll risk trying again." 

Q, who is pointing the taser at Bond like a gun - staring down it as if it has sights which, it seems, it bloody does - looks stricken. "To me?"

Bond shouldn't tell him. He should have gone to the trouble of dying as a traitor. Maybe Q's accusations of romance have some truth to them. "I wasn't bugging their way _towards_ their target. I was bugging their target." Bond has managed to stand up from the couch. Q hasn't fired. "They know your address. Not your passcodes to get in, since you were smart enough to never tell me and they believed me when I told them I wasn't smart enough to crack them."  
  
Q's arm is lowering. "Why didn't you just tell us you were being threatened?"  
  
Bond jerks forward. He can't get a good walking cadence with the duct tape across his knees. The bad one aches. "Ask yourself that later. Make a decision _now_." _'Kill me, kill me, kill me'_. The ache to be destroyed is one Bond's never once put into coherent words. He's crossed the threshold to forty and he can't admit it to himself.  
  
One last sacrifice. All Q has to do is kill him and he destroys the anonymity of another international mafia, as well as their most dangerous asset; the one that was supposed to get them closer to their real target. Sabotaged from the beginning.  
  
Q lowers the taser to his side. "Sit down, Bond. I'm not going to be able to pick you up a second time if you trip. You'll have plenty of time to be uncomfortable when MI6 questions you themselves later."  
  
The realization takes several moments to sink in. "You're not—" 

"No, James." Q sighs. There's a sudden age to him that Bond's only seen during moments when Q thinks he's not being watched. "I'm not going to bloody pull the trigger. If you're so eager to follow M, you'll have to do it yourself."  
  
Maybe the ringing slap of that statement is what Bond deserves, all things considered. At the very least it's enough to have him sit back down on the couch with an undignified thump.  
  
"How much wrong information did you feed them during this little charade?"  
  
Bond doesn't answer. There's a hollowness in his chest that's slowly filling. He doesn't want to name whatever it is.  
  
It's not until Q's picked up his phone and presumably is on his way to calling Moneypenny or M himself that Bond finally says, "They know your real name."  
  
Q pauses. Sighs while the phone rings against his ear and makes brief eye contact with Bond. "If I hear it from you right now, I may rethink my position on killing you myself." And then the cadence of his voice switches entirely as someone picks up on the other end.  
  
Bond very, very slowly relaxes into his couch and wonders what it will feel like to come back from the dead a second time. 

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone interested in doing their own fanworks for minibangs and bang challenges with a friendly group of writers, artists, and fans, check out MI6 cafe on [tumblr](https://mi6-cafe.tumblr.com/) or [wordpress](https://mi6cafe.wordpress.com)! Again, the artist who did the lovely [work right above](https://boffin1710.tumblr.com/post/618948444626812928/a-second-time-sgtsalt-james-bond-craig) can be found on [tumblr](https://boffin1710.tumblr.com) and here on [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boffin1710).


End file.
